Letter of Recommendation: Sick Days

Sick in bed is a bit like Halloween: a day on which you wear a costume to express the parts of yourself that can’t normally be expressed.CreditPete Deevakul for The New York Times

By Sheila Heti

Jan. 14, 2016

Now with computers on our laps, it’s hard to be perfectly, indulgently sick in bed. With our phones right there, we are tied to the life we were living yesterday, when we weren’t yet sick in bed. It’s time to be truly sick in bed this winter — sick like in the old days, when there was ginger ale from the store and fresh magazines on the night stand. Put it on the autoresponder: I’ll reply to you next week when I’m no longer sick in bed.

Sick in bed is a time to let all the thoughts of the last few months, all your experiences and memories, float up in your head, up near the ceiling, which is wobbling with fever. It is a time to take stock of your life. A friend of mine who is in his mid-60s realized (30 years ago, while married to a woman) that he was actually gay and had to change his life. When did he realize this? While he was sick in bed. Were he sick in bed today, he would be on his phone, on his laptop, realizing nothing, living with a woman, despite a vague unease.

I recommend being sick in bed especially when you are not that sick. When you are seriously knocked out, eyes crusted over, sneezing nonstop, it’s hard to have life-changing epiphanies. The sick days we must take advantage of are those when it’s just a simple cold. The days when, if we pushed ourselves, we could get out of bed; the days when all it would take is a shower to make us feel 70 percent better. Those are exactly the days we should choose to be sick in bed. You still have your brain; you’re not aching all over. You just need to take things slower.

Sick in bed is for reading, for not reading, for thinking, for not thinking, for not moving. We move our legs and arms every day; it’s fair to take a few days off. The body doesn’t have to be moved every single day. Our social world won’t fall apart if we decide to withdraw for a week.

Six years ago, when I had just fallen in love with my boyfriend, I got very sick. I stayed in bed and didn’t reply to email, didn’t answer the phone, canceled all my appointments (as I wish to do every week) and wrote a novella. I figure this happens to a writer once in a lifetime, if she is lucky. It wouldn’t have happened if I had not been sick, if I had not just fallen in love. If you have just fallen in love, take the week off sick. With all those new emotions and without having to put on a false face for anyone, you might just write a novella nobody likes.

Some people are not allowed to take sick days. They should not play sick. But the ones who can, or the ones who, like me, work from home already, should. Twice a winter seems right. If you have children, you probably have to not be sick, to tend to your children. I don’t know anything about this.

Sick in bed is a license to have loved ones bring you things, if you live with loved ones. A friend of mine once emailed another friend and asked her to pick up soup for him. She did it but grumbled to me about it, because after all, she knew he wasn’t that sick, he was just being a baby. But it’s O.K. to be a baby, even twice a winter. They remained friends. I’m sure neither of them remembers.

Why is it so hard to stop doing, to just rest? Can we value our unproductivity — not in terms of how productive it will make us later on, and not even for how it will help us with our life choices or novella-writing but simply for its own sake?

Imagine a person going busily about every day, ticking things off his or her list, making phone calls, interacting with people, exercising, cooking meals. Then one day, imagine this same person lying in bed all day, staring at the ceiling. It seems reasonable, even wise. It seems entirely natural.

Sick in bed is a bit like Halloween: a day on which you wear a costume to express the parts of yourself that can’t normally be expressed. In this case, what can’t be expressed on other days is that all of our activity is ultimately worthless, that we are going to the grave, that being busy is largely about keeping up the appearance that our lives mean something, our relationships mean something, our work means something and crossing things off a list means something. It’s true. These things do mean something. But they also don’t. Sick days are like Halloween; days on which you can live and dress up wholly in life’s bleakness. The costume is simple: It’s bed.

I am writing this from under the covers, half-sick. There is a bottle of mineral water and a pile of tissues beside me on the night stand, a pot of lip balm for my chapped lips and three mugs emptied of tea. A book is half-hidden beneath the sheets, one I began two weeks ago and have meant to finish reading. I haven’t walked the dog. It is 4 p.m.

Clearly, I have my laptop open. I am writing. I am working. I am following none of my own advice. I will realize nothing about my sexuality today. My life will continue as it has. But I wish to beat a path to an unknown future! I must stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, let someone bring me cocoa in bed.

Sheila Heti is the author of seven books, including the novel ‘‘How Should a Person Be?’’

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